Police have arrested three key organizers supporting people protesting Atlanta's proposed police and fire training center, which opponents call “Cop City.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says its agents and Atlanta police on Wednesday arrested three officers of the group that runs the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. The fund has bailed out protesters and helped them find lawyers. Charged with money laundering and charity fraud are 39-year-old Marlon Scott Kautz of Atlanta; 30-year-old Savannah D. Patterson of Savannah; and 42-year-old Adele MacLean of Atlanta. Opponents say it's an “extreme provocation” to arrest leaders of a bail fund. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp says they're part of a criminal organization.
Have they misrepresented what the donations they are soliciting were going to be used for?
i think based purely on the rhetoric of the police and the state of Georgia, you can already pretty reasonably assume these are politically motivated arrests in search of a crime. they run a bail fund, and yet this is the quote:
outside of that, the probability of this being more political than anything is supported by protesters in the Stop Cop City movement facing exceptionally punitive consequences to this point. there was the murder of an activist earlier this year by cops who lied about it being self-defense, but even past that 40 people have already been charged with “domestic terrorism” related to the protests and it’s just… really dubious that more than a handful of those people even committed crimes at all, much less the specific and very severe charge of domestic terrorism. the warrants for a lot of them don’t even mention violence, injury, or vandalism!
I also highly doubt they’ve broken the law. My point was, unless they misrepresented their intended use of the funds, I don’t see how a crime was committed.
ah, my mistake–most people only kind of vaguely know all the shenanigans here. the state doesn’t seem to be super quick to divulge what the crime here is either, for what it’s worth. it doesn’t seem like the three’s lawyer knows what they’ve been arrested for or what they’re accused of.